Thursday, December 30, 2010

It's time to walk the talk in the new year

With the heralding of the new year there are two challenges before me which requires actioning every bit that I have talked about in these forums.

First is to regain my health situation. Need to bring down my cholesterol levels further and reduce 10 Kg in the process. Challenge is greater as it is expected be done without any 'exercise' and only with diet control. Given the strict diet control and my daily work life that is one tough ask.

Second challenge before me is to act upon the feedback I received and get my new career in swing. Again in order to achieve the annual objectives for June this year, I will have to complete the basics by mid February again.

All in all it's time to walk the talk. Let's see the progress.

Saturday, December 25, 2010

"Secret - It actually works"

I was the rarely the superstitious type. However I had this belief that it was time to getting in to a job which allows me to travel to various countries and also gain experience as a sales person with the number pressure to deliver.

Was I eyeing something specific? Absolutely not. But I had this strong desire for that. On paper I would have had the worse possible qualifications for landing with such an opportunity. My experience was in the field of proper marketing and my natural progression if at was either getting in to general management, hierarchycally grow in the current role I was in or may be to move in to another multinational for a similar role in the field of marketing.

If you asked me back in May if I knew as to where the opportunity would be the answer would be a big No! I and I alone only knew about it. As a prolific reader there was renewed focus on reading about international cross border transactions, more about Fortune 500 companies and international sales etc.

I was envisioning, visualizing myself playing a role of an international sales person, doing travel etc.

Then all of a sudden I was asked by a friend of mine as to I would like to "have a chat regarding a marketing opportunity" at a Fortune 500 IT company operating in the country. Without any serious expectations in mind I thought I should just have a chat. In preparing for the discussions I started updating my CV.

Once I updated my CV I did send it to the respective referees for their reference . Low behold one of them called back and said as to whether it is ok if he send my CV across to his company as their is an internal role which has become vacant. When inquired further guess what the role was all about. It was essentially a territory corporate sales management role which requires me to handle the home country and a another country. Further it too was a Fortune 500 IT company.

Here I am today doing a job very much in line with what I was envisioning 5 months back and enjoying every bit of it.

The best part is that yet again my career change has taken a completely different turn to a totally new area. Career wise whether it was the right thing to do was always questionable. But my decade old corporate history I've always made conscious choices to gain completely different experiences. I suppose only time will be the kiddie of that.

Friday, December 24, 2010

Getting feedback

At times it is quite obvious that you are not doing something right. You know you are not getting the desired results but you just don't get what you need to do differently. You have the desire to achieve success but something seems keep you away from it. In cricket at times the best batsman all of a sudden go through lean patches. That is when a coach or a mentor will pitch in get the batsman to make that slight adjustment to his technique.

Having a mentor is so critical for a simple reason. The coach, the mentor could see the obvious mistakes one makes. Those mistakes could be simple but yet critical in the final analysis of achieving result.

Today I received suchVehicle servicing  feedback on my new job from a colleague of mine. Reflecting on simple observations he made me realize what I have been over looking for the past 4 months. I just realized how powerful the simple observations would be. I've given myself till end January to act on the rectification areas. Will be glad to share the progress with you in February.

Irrespective of whether you do good or bad at work, reach out and seek feedback. It van only help you.

Thursday, December 2, 2010

Blog status update

It has been a long time since I have written something in my blog. I hav been going through a career change and is in the process of settling down. I have spent the last couple of months orienting my self to the new line of work and also travelling a lot by my usual standards. There is a lot of experiences to share interms of walking the talk of how to adapt to change and about the "secret". It does work!

Feel free to share your thoughts or feedback on this posting under the comments column

Raising the bar with a new hire

Hiring a new person for an existing position is always interesting. Hiring a person who is a Team Lead or a Department Head is even more interesting for various reasons. But one thing is for sure. You always look at raise the bar in terms of what the new person bring to the table.

However this becomes highly contextual. Common phenomena is to benchmark against the person who left to see for similar qualities in better packaging. That might be a recipe for disaster. Irrespective of how well one performs one to one match will and can only ensure continuity. While continuity might look stable in some instances it rarely raises the bar.

So what should companies do?

One needs to align the role in the context of organizational strategy and see what sort of a a person is required in terms of both technical competencies and soft skill set.

Also it is important to focus on the softer side of things more as the person is inheriting an existing culture. While the new head is certainly within his rights to create his own culture, how s(he) goes about doing it could very well make or break the team. Companies need to find some level of comfort about the cultural adaptability of the new hire as well.

Technical brilliance could mean nothing in an environment which requires a lot of team effort for the regular running of the business while certain situations demand technical brilliance more than anything else.

Having said that there are occasions companies would look for complete and overall re-hauling of departments!!!




Feel free to share your thoughts or feedback on this posting under the comments column